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Thermal Processing for Aerospace, Aviation, and Defense

Paulo has earned a reputation as a renowned provider of commercial and defense aerospace and aviation heat treating services.

We Help Aerospace Suppliers Fly Higher, Farther, and Faster

We have a long history of serving the world’s leading aerospace & defense primes and tiered suppliers. We understand the support you need to bring innovations to life. Here’s how we help.

Specialty Projects

As a leading aerospace and defense prime contractor, your research and development efforts are essential for moving the industry forward. And while most suppliers are unwilling to think beyond their own standard process, we promise to do exactly that. Paulo has a long tradition of working hand-in-hand with engineers and metallurgists at our customer’s organizations to help with research and development. We even modify and customize our processing equipment to meet your unique specs. And, thanks to our advanced process control automation, we often complete obscure, one-off or technically complex aerospace heat treatment jobs that other processors won’t touch.

Precision & Repeatability

In the aerospace and defense industries the reliability of your parts is directly tied to the safety and effectiveness of the end product. There’s no room for error, and your standards for precision and repeatability must be upheld by all partners that handle your parts. Thermal processing is no exception. We use a combination of precise furnace controls, automation, and strict quality control and testing practices to give you peace of mind. Dozens of sensors monitor heat cycles in real time and trigger alarms if out-of-spec conditions are observed. And strict quarantining protocol ensures that no part re-enters the supply chain unless it meets specification.

Approvals & Certifications

Paulo was the first National Aerospace and Defense Contractors Accreditation Program (Nadcap)-certified thermal processor east of the Mississippi River and quickly achieved the Program’s merit status in both Cleveland and Kansas City. That means that Nadcap auditors were impressed enough by our sites, equipment, and process controls that they audit us every two years instead of annually.

Handling

When you’re bringing expensive, highly sensitive components to market, there’s significantly more room for error. Even the smallest mishandling by one of your partners can lead to huge costs down the line. To ensure your parts are handled with extreme care, we use advanced equipment capable of specialized treatment fine-tuned to your exact specifications in addition to careful monitoring to track how components are handled throughout the process.

Thermal Processing Capabilities for Aerospace and Aviation

With vacuum, batch and continuous batch equipment running nonstop in our Cleveland and Kansas City divisions, Paulo has the solution treating and vacuum brazing capacity necessary to complete aerospace heat treating orders on short deadlines and turn them around quickly.

Hot Isostatic Pressing

HIP is opening a new world of possibilities for aerospace & defense OEMs, making new, lighter, and more sustainable materials and methods of manufacturing such as additive manufacturing viable for aircraft and space exploration for the first time. Additive manufacturing in particular has opened a new world of possibilities since it can achieve more complex part geometries than traditional machining. We offer hot isostatic pressing (HIP) in our Cleveland division with our Quintus QIH-122 furnace.

Additive manufacturing allows suppliers to achieve more complex part geometries than traditional machining. This enables features and part geometries that previously would have been impossible. Hot Isostatic Pressing densifies these parts, improving performance. 

We offer hot isostatic pressing (HIP) in our Cleveland division with our Quintus QIH-122 furnace.

Solution Treating

We can create treatments that feature very slow ramp rates (down to around 1 degree per minute) and precision controlled cooling. This ensures that parts reach the required treatment temperature slowly and evenly, which promotes proper solutionizing.

Annealing

Annealing is often applied to aerospace and defense components as part of the manufacturing process to enhance the machinability of different materials.

Depending on your material, we can provide full annealing, intercritical annealing, and sub-critical annealing.

Precipitation Hardening

While the annealing process is meant to dissolve a material’s constituent phases into a solution for ease of machinability, precipitation creates new phases in a material that help to increase strength.

Through Hardening

Through hardening is ideal for strength applications where parts need to sustain heavy loads during service life such as fasteners, nuts, bolts, brackets, and more.

Vacuum Brazing

Vacuum brazing is a specialized metal joining process that is well suited for aerospace components where tight tolerances are required. Brazing in a vacuum atmosphere yields bright, clean parts and high-integrity joints for hot section engine components.

Hot Isostatic Pressing

HIP is opening a new world of possibilities for aerospace & defense OEMs, making new, lighter, and more sustainable materials and methods of manufacturing such as additive manufacturing viable for aircraft and space exploration for the first time. Additive manufacturing in particular has opened a new world of possibilities since it can achieve more complex part geometries than traditional machining. We offer hot isostatic pressing (HIP) in our Cleveland division with our Quintus QIH-122 furnace.

Additive manufacturing allows suppliers to achieve more complex part geometries than traditional machining. This enables features and part geometries that previously would have been impossible. Hot Isostatic Pressing densifies these parts, improving performance. 

We offer hot isostatic pressing (HIP) in our Cleveland division with our Quintus QIH-122 furnace.

Solution Treating

We can create treatments that feature very slow ramp rates (down to around 1 degree per minute) and precision controlled cooling. This ensures that parts reach the required treatment temperature slowly and evenly, which promotes proper solutionizing.

Annealing

Annealing is often applied to aerospace and defense components as part of the manufacturing process to enhance the machinability of different materials.

Depending on your material, we can provide full annealing, intercritical annealing, and sub-critical annealing.

Precipitation Hardening

While the annealing process is meant to dissolve a material’s constituent phases into a solution for ease of machinability, precipitation creates new phases in a material that help to increase strength.

Through Hardening

Through hardening is ideal for strength applications where parts need to sustain heavy loads during service life such as fasteners, nuts, bolts, brackets, and more.

Vacuum Brazing

Vacuum brazing is a specialized metal joining process that is well suited for aerospace components where tight tolerances are required. Brazing in a vacuum atmosphere yields bright, clean parts and high-integrity joints for hot section engine components.

Aerospace & Defense Parts We Process

If you’ve ever flown commercial, your plane probably included parts treated by Paulo. We’ve processed numerous components (including hot section engine parts) for Boeing 737, 757 and 787 Dreamliner aircraft in addition to many other commercial aircraft platforms.

Our military résumé is also exceptionally strong, having treated components in combat aircraft like Lockheed Martin’s F-35, Boeing’s F/A-18 and Fairchild-Republic’s famed A-10 Thunderbolt (better known by its nickname “Warthog”). In addition, we’ve completed specialty treatments of parts found in the turbine engines that power helicopters and tanks. We’ve treated submarine parts, too.

We even treated rocket booster fuel pump parts during NASA’s space shuttle program and have treated parts currently in orbit on the International Space Station.

  • Critical sensors
  • Radar and electronic systems components
  • Hot section turbine engine parts
  • Door locking hinges
  • Wing attachment bolts
  • Rocket booster fuel pump parts

Common Materials for Aerospace & Defense

  • Nickel-based superalloys
  • Additive manufactured components
  • Single crystal castings
  • Directionally solidified castings
  • Titanium alloys
  • Martensitic stainless steels
  • Austenitic stainless steels
  • Alloy steels

Certifications & Approvals

Our Cleveland and Kansas City divisions are Nadcap and AS9100 certified. We’re also approved by many primes and OEMs including airframers, engine manufacturers, and other major sub-system suppliers. See our quality page for a full list of our approvals and certifications.

Certification |Cleveland Division
Nadcap (CLV)
Approval |Cleveland Division
GE Aviation
Certification |Kansas City Division
Nadcap (KCY)
Approval |Kansas City Division
Boeing BAC 5617
View All

Trust Your Parts to Paulo

If you’re an aerospace or defense supplier, Paulo could be the quality-focused thermal processor you can count on to provide critical thermal processes. Connect with a Paulo expert today, and let’s work on solving your toughest challenges together.

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